I thought it would be interesting to undertake a speedrun. I did a preliminary run of the prologue (just till after Redwood escapes on the bike) and I selected save. My time read 000:21 on the load menu. I'm sure with some faster navigation you could cut that part of the prologue to 20 minutes.

I did the run on the PSN version. In order to find the fastest route I used the English translation on emulator and took notes of the input commands. It's no fun having to memorize commands so I think I'll just emulate it and use the English patch for the run. Not as if this will be an official speedrun anyway.

I actually began to wonder what the fastest control method would be. Sure with mouse your navigation is going to be faster but when it comes to gun fights a controller would be faster as you can simply spam lock onto targets which takes all of the randomness/aiming issues out of the equation (especially if you are doing a single segment).

Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:45 am

LambertAdams

Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 8:16 amPosts: 19

Re: Speedrun

That is an interesting idea, I've thought about it before. The key I suspect would be describing the absolute minimum amount of actions needed to proceed to the next cutscene of the game. There are a bunch of parts where you need to do the classic "talk to everyone and look at everything twice" to progress. I've never been able to figure out what exactly causes the trip to Beyond in the space shuttle to end, or what causes the phonecall to happen during dinner with Ed's family. Ideally you would want to figure out what flags the game uses and what actions triggers changes to them, using a debugger or memory inspector. Or maybe the game uses a timer as well as flags.

Once you know the set of actions, you come up with an order of doing those actions with the minimum amount of cursor movement needed to get from clickable screen region to region.

Once you figure that out, a TAS of the game could be very efficient. I don't think there's anything random about enemy placement in the action sequences so you can just script the most efficient cursor route to hit everything you need to. The lock on using a controller might help or might not, it doesn't always seem to lock you to the right things.

You could also play the PC98 version and disable the voiceover so you can just skip through the dialogue. I think there is an option you can pass to the executable from DOS, or you can use a cleared save file and make it a new speedrun category. Might be the fastest version because of this ability.

Thu Dec 05, 2013 9:40 am

TheThrillness

Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:14 amPosts: 12

Re: Speedrun

LambertAdams wrote:

I've never been able to figure out what exactly causes the trip to Beyond in the space shuttle to end

I just did some quick planning for that area and I have a decent idea of what to do. I took a video. There is probably a faster route than this.

Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:51 am

best name ever

Second Lieutenant

Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:49 pmPosts: 357

Re: Speedrun

I remember there was someone that came here talking about doing a speed run for Snatcher....in fact, here's the thread,viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2672el_ash made a good point in that thread,

el_ash wrote:

I enjoy watching a good speedrun, but I personally don't see a point for making a "Snatcher" speedrun...

The game doesn't really have any gameplay, so you'd just be filming yourself skipping through a ton of text options.

I like to watch amazing displays of gaming skill determined by how fast and flawlessly the person finishes a game, and that's the point of a speedrun. Skipping through text just doesn't qualify as mastery or skill to me...hence...not worthy of a speedrun (no offense).

But who knows? someone might be into the idea?

Not trying to discourage you or anything, just saying that when you speed through Policenauts you essentially loose the entire game. Which doesn't really help a speed run.

_________________What Button Do You Press To Jump!?!

Fri Dec 06, 2013 8:44 am

TheThrillness

Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:14 amPosts: 12

Re: Speedrun

Yes I came up against similar points when I ran Heavy Rain. Stuff like "How can you speedrun a QTE game... lol". It ended up that my speedrun gained massive support and I had blog posts written about how entertaining it was to watch: http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog: ... Heavy_Rain

Speedrunning and finding the shortest paths is a secondary goal as of now. I'll first look at finding some glitches and skips.

Fri Dec 06, 2013 10:10 am

best name ever

Second Lieutenant

Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:49 pmPosts: 357

Re: Speedrun

Interesting. If you think you can pull it off then more power to yeah. Looking forward to what you are able to accomplish!

_________________What Button Do You Press To Jump!?!

Fri Dec 06, 2013 10:47 am

LambertAdams

Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2013 8:16 amPosts: 19

Re: Speedrun

Good luck, and if you do find any skips or glitches, please post them, it would be fascinating to see.

Also, I subscribed to your YouTube account, looking forward to seeing where you get to.

Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:11 am

TheThrillness

Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:14 amPosts: 12

Re: Speedrun

I don't know if this place is still alive but I thought I would give an update on progress (I sort of forgot about it until like 2 weeks ago).

I finally finished routing the full game but I think I might need to go over it again just to make sure the route is as solid as I can make it. During the Redwood train area I discovered what I guess is a glitch. Usually the game expects you to investigate the train, then passengers and the signs etc until Redwood reveals himself. However, you can just mash about 6 or 7 ""Look" on the train and it triggers Redwood to appear.

If I was to guess, the game starts a counter and once say the counter hits 6 it will trigger Redwood. The counter is incremented each time you "Look" on something. However, the counter won't increment on some Look prompts (it only increments the counter once). I tried it with the passengers and it doesn't work. If you look on a passenger and then mash the train, it will only take 5 Look prompts which supports the theory.

You can also do the same thing in Act 5 during the tour. Just do the required Salvatore dialogue, then mash Look on one of the buildings 7 times or so to end the tour. Again, this only works with some of the Look prompts.

That is all done on the PS1 game. I actually want to undertake a TAS of this game instead of a console run but unfortunately the PS1 TAS emulators don't even run this game! I even went as far as getting the Saturn version to TAS but that has some pretty severe graphic glitches on the TAS emulator (BizHawk) that makes the game unplayable (basically you can't even see Jonathan's office).

Also big thanks to LambertAdams who hooked me up with the NG+ mode and emulator for the PC98. The beginning has some slight changes but it's nothing that severe from the PS1 route. However, the shuttle on the way to beyond is completely different. The route I use for PS1 does not work at all. In the PC98 version you have to actually activate the TV/Girl and do even more dialogue. I'm not sure what the triggers are for PC98. I played on till Hojo's house (after visiting Tokugawa building) and the rest seemed not that changed but I am sure something else later on will be like the shuttle.

I should also state that this game can't really be done as a single segment. Choosing the crest order on the PC and the bags in the shop are RNG. The crest isn't too big of an issue if you can memorize it but the bags are. Once you get to the bag area you would have to save, check what bag the bomb is in and then reload the save and hope the RNG was locked in after the save.

So that leaves me with 3 realistic options for a speedrun:

1. Annoy the PSX TAS emulator authors to fix Policenauts.2. Run Segmented on PSN version.3. Run Segmented/save state run on emulator (possibly English patch). I know this isn't official but I guess the patch is as official as it gets. That does mean I'll have to look into a proper PS1 emulator such as ePSXe using one of the guides.

Fri May 23, 2014 9:23 am

SnatcherMkII

Runner

Joined: Sat Mar 03, 2012 3:30 pmPosts: 141

Re: Speedrun

I don't really recommend TAS emulators. It just seems so game breaking.

I suggest using accurate emulators like Mednafen (under RetroArch's libretro that is) and XEBRA. PSN is accurate since it is running on a Playstation console.

Wed May 28, 2014 4:01 am

TheThrillness

Joined: Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:14 amPosts: 12

Re: Speedrun

Long time no see people!

I haven't given up on this. I've just been waiting for emulators to get PSX up at a TAS level and it finally happened yesterday with BizHawk.

Here I present a TAS of the Prologue. It's not frame perfect but for my first TAS I think I did okay. I'll work on Act 1 over the next week or so.

Would have probably had Act 1 nearly done but the emulator does not have disc swapping implemented and according to the developer, my movie might not work properly once it's put in. I'm stalling progress until disc swapping is implemented and then I can start over/fix my original movie so it syncs properly.

Mon Dec 15, 2014 10:47 am

Jexis Lexington

Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2014 7:09 pmPosts: 28

Re: Speedrun

Well isn't this fascinating. I wish you luck on your speedrun, although if you can I'd recommend switching to the Japanese version because there's less text and it will be faster to go through dialogue. Too bad you're not doing the PC-98 version. I wouldn't mind a speedrun to watch and enjoy the graphics with.

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